The man who vowed to undo Washington’s wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of “budget reconciliation.” The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.

Somehow the tables have turned. For all the smears of big money funding the “deniers”, the numbers reveal that the sceptics are actually the true grassroots campaigners, while Greenpeace defends Wall St. How times have changed.

Sceptics are fighting a billion dollar industry aligned with a trillion dollar trading scheme. Big Oil’s supposed evil influence has been vastly outdone by Big Government, and even those taxpayer billions are trumped by Big-Banking.

The big-money side of this debate has fostered a myth that sceptics write what they write because they are funded by oil profits. They say, follow the money? So I did and it’s chilling. Greens and environmentalists need to be aware each time they smear with an ad hominem attack they are unwittingly helping giant finance houses.

One of my favourite book covers depicts a doctor staring at us in earnest from a 1950s television set. His visage and dress convey a man of sober-minded science. His speech-balloon says, “Trust us, we’re experts,” which is the book’s title. In his right hand he holds a lit cigarette.

The book, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, documents the way in which industry purchases the services of so-called independent “experts,” who promote a message that is profitable to them, while simultaneously discrediting the opposition. Inconvenient data is suppressed and manipulated. Working backwards, paid-up scientists arrive at the sought-after conclusions. The character, motivations and bona fides of opponents are called into question, as the virtues and credentials of those who are on-side are exaggerated.

But what is most sought after in the public relations game is the creation of what the authors call a “media pseudo-environment,” one in which ordinary citizens are encouraged to abandon their own judgment, and blindly place their trust in the approved experts. The general population then internalizes the favoured message, obediently becoming its apologists and advocates.

The spin doctors establish a priesthood of experts who alone are in a position to adjudicate truth, and who the rest of us must blindly follow.

The supposed consensus on global warming has melted like a Himalayan glacier in an IPCC report. Scientists are admitting error and apologizing. So what’s with the rearguard action by journalists?

We could be burning the last newspaper for warmth and they’d still be warning us about global warming. But now the scientists are admitting they bungled their research and misspoke themselves, don’t the reporters and opinion writers on whom so many rely to keep informed also owe the public an apology?

Is Barack Obama a serious man? The Obamas started a regular music series at the White House so they and their friends and family can enjoy some tunes; Barack Obama flies off to Copenhagen to push the global warming story; flies off to promote Chicago as an Olympic site; flies up to New York City to take in a Broadway show; plays golf with an avidity that eclipses that of Dwight Eisenhower; reward Democratic donors with perks at the White House …

In times of trouble, it is always reassuring to think that we can count on Washington’s support to get us out of a fix. OK, so the Americans have an irritating habit of turning up late, and then claiming all the glory, as was the case in the two world wars. But even today, in the killing fields of southern Afghanistan, the arrival of 30,000 US Marines three years after British troops first deployed to the region has immeasurably improved our chances of defeating the Taliban, as I discovered during my visit to Camp Bastion last week.

[…]

The argument advanced by successive British governments to justify this commitment is that in return for supporting the US in its hour of need, we can expect the same in return: that if Canary Wharf and Whitehall had been attacked by airliners commandeered by al-Qaeda, instead of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Washington would have rushed to our support.

Yet after this week’s unwelcome, and unnecessary, intervention by Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, in the latest spat over the Falkland Islands, one begins to wonder just how committed the Americans would be if Britain were to find itself seriously threatened. Would Washington be prepared to commit its military might to defend our interests, or would it simply confine its response to firing a few barrages of cruise missiles?

[…]

The left-wing extremist Obama administration views the west and its alliances from a communist perspective.

Earlier this week, I criticized the American media for ignoring the rapidly-increasing number of scandals surrounding the IPCC, the University of East Anglia CRU, and the anthropogenic global-warming movement in general. Today, an American newspaper breaks news of yet another scandal involving AGW scientists and e-mail — but this time here in the US. The Washington Times obtained e-mails sent through the National Academy of Sciences that show AGW scientists conspiring to attack critics:

Undaunted by a rash of scandals over the science underpinning climate change, top climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be “an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach” to gut the credibility of skeptics.

The free people of Europe begin to strike back against their corrupt, compromised governing elites. An excerpt from the SIOE statement:

Denmark is at war. The government tells us that we are in war against terror which actually is only a tactic. We cannot be in war against an tactic, we have to be in war against those who use the tactic. That is what SIOE intends to do.Quote: Lieutenant Colonel Allen West:-

“Winston Churchill did not lead a war against blitzkrieg, he led a war against the Nazis.”

The Religious and Evangelical Left, plus the Islamic Society of North America and a few others, are making a final Custer-like stand on behalf of much cherished Obamacare. In an ad featured in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper aimed at congressional staffers, a religious coalition called “Faithful Reform in Health Care” demanded that Congress “complete the task at hand on behalf of the millions who are left out and left behind in our current health care system.”

Supposedly, these insistent religious groups speak on behalf of millions of religious Americans, most of whom are politically more conservative than the general population. If Americans as a whole reject Obamacare, then almost certainly most religiously active Americans oppose Obamacare. Presumably, the various bishops and other ostensibly important clerics who signed this ad are hoping that Capitol Hill readers will not realize that most church goers don’t look to Episcopal or Lutheran or Methodist bishops for wise political counsel.

The Kingdom of England is in a parlous state. Ruled by a rotten Scottish tyranny, the nation groans under the weight of oppressive, unconstitutional laws, the ruling elite is in the pay of its absolutist masters on the continent, and many Englishmen suspect their government is promoting an oppressive and reactionary religion against the will of the people.

The nation’s only hope is a charismatic young Dutchman fighting almost single-handedly against the creation of a united Europe under the rule of an unelected tyrant in Holland’s southern neighbour.

The Dutchman, coming to England’s aid, warns its people:

“It is both certain and evident to all men, that the public peace and happiness of any state or kingdom cannot be preserved, where the Laws, Liberties, and Customs, established by the lawful authority in it, are openly transgressed and annulled; more especially where the alteration of Religion is endeavoured, and that a religion, which is contrary to law, is endeavoured to be introduced; upon which those who are most immediately concerned in it are indispensably bound to endeavour to preserve and maintain the established Laws, Liberties and customs, and, above all, the Religion and Worship of God, that is established among them; and to take such an effectual care, that the inhabitants of the said state or kingdom may neither be deprived of their Religion, nor of their Civil Rights”

Three centuries after William III of Orange, another Dutchman comes to these shores, although at least King Billy never had to defend himself against charges of “Cathophobia”.

GB: We also have on the line with us, as we always do when we’re lucky on Thursdays, Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn, http://www.steynonline.com. Mark Steyn, how are you?

MS: I’m a little bit aggrieved now. When I guest hosted for Hugh a couple of years back, I didn’t get Mary Katharine as co-host. So I think on behalf of previous guest hosts, we should all file a class action suit demanding to know why we didn’t get Mary Katharine as our co-host.

GB: Hugh could actually represent you, probably.

MS: (laughing) That would be worth doing.

GB: Mark, we all watched the speech yesterday. The president of the United States concluded with this lovely sound byte, cut five:

BHO: They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.

GB: He knows it’s right, Mark.

MS: (laughing) Well of course, the American people are not waiting for him to act. They’ve seen what it is he proposed to enact, and they don’t want it. And it’s as simple as that. And the more speeches he gives, the more the American people’s opposition to it grows. This is one of the greatest failures of political leadership in the modern era. When he started out with this shtick a year ago now, something like 70% of the American people were in favor of so-called health care reform. After whatever it is, 450 speeches later, they are now opposed to it by 70%. And it’s astonishing to me that the president still thought this wretched, little speech, you know, where he was doing all this, the time is now or whatever it is, or this is the moment, it’s the big, bombastic ballad in that Broadway musical from a couple of years back, Jeckle and Hyde. And one point, just before Jeckle turns into hide, he sings this big ballad called This Is The Moment. I think David Hasselhoff played it at one point. And that’s really what the president is doing. As the Jeckle of health care turns into the Mr. Hyde of Obamacare, he still comes out on stage every couple of minutes and sings Now is the hour, this is the moment, our time is come, we must seize the moment. And it never, and it hasn’t worked for the last year. It’s not going to work now.

The New York Times is quoting a spokesman for George Soros as saying that the well-known hedge fund operator is guilty of no wrong-doing in connection with the financial upheaval currently affecting Greece and Europe as a whole. But Zubi Diamond, author of the powerful new book, Wizards of Wall Street, says the agenda of Soros and other short sellers is clear. Their purpose, he says, is “to loot America and any foreign country which invested in America. Greece was one of them. Iceland was ravaged and annihilated.”

Democrats are charging toward quick passage of a healthcare reform bill that will immediately hike personal income taxes, says political consultant and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris.

Morris is urging the bill’s opponents to speak out en masse within the next seven days to sway swing votes in the House. Democrats will force a vote on healthcare within the next week, Morris tells Newsmax.TV’s Ashley Martella.

The current version of reform is actually worse than the prior bills, because it includes a 2.5-percentage-point increase in personal income taxes, Morris says. That’s on top of a five point increase from repealing the Bush tax cuts and a 2.5 point increase in capital gains tax – both proposed in Obama’s budget.

“In the next week our fate will be decided,” Morris says. “[The bill] is horrific in its consequences.”

It’s the question raised by yesterday’s New York Times article on the push for balance in classroom discussions of global warming, though, as Jay Richards aptly notes over at The American, the real point of Leslie Kaufman’s story is “to connect the teaching of evolution to the climate change debate.”

Recent statements by Chinese military officials are raising concerns among U.S. analysts that the communist government in Beijing is shifting its oft-stated “peaceful rise” policy toward an aggressive, anti-U.S. posture.

The most recent sign appeared with the publication of a government-approved book by Senior Col. Liu Mingfu that urges China to “sprint” toward becoming the world’s most powerful state.

“Although this book is one of many by a senior colonel, it certainly challenges the thesis of many U.S. China-watchers that the People’s Liberation Army’s rapid military growth is not designed to challenge the United States as a global power or the U.S. military,” said Larry M. Wortzel, a China affairs specialist who until recently was co-chairman of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

A Reuters report on Col. Liu’s book, “The China Dream,” appeared Tuesday in the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily. It quoted the book as stating China and the United States are in “competition to be the leading country, a conflict over who rises and falls to dominate the world.”

Not enough people know about the Tides Foundation, which is one of the original “philanthropic” donation launderers for donors who don’t want to be tied to fringe activist groups. Frankly, there’s too much to tell, but they’re the sugar daddy for ACORN (whose founder, Wade Rathke, is intricately linked within Tides official leadership).

The immolation for the freedom of Cuba by the prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata reveals, once again, the intrinsic evil of the Castro dictatorship. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have encountered their deaths at the hands of the regime’s repressive apparatus throughout 5 decades of communist nightmare. Several generations of Cubans have never enjoyed the most basic rights and freedoms. Nevertheless, the utter contempt toward human life by the Castro brothers has not been able to silence the voices of those who, like Orlando, prefer the physical death to the spiritual death.

Last night I was chatting with a friend, a distinguished writer. He told me the following anecdotes. His son had taken his children back to their boarding school after the half-term break and was driving straight back home, around 50 miles away. He had consumed neither drink nor drugs and was driving steadily and carefully while listening to music. He became aware of a car following him closely for most of the way; to his astonishment, when he pulled into his drive the car followed him and out got two police officers.

It’s now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Last September, the president promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

About this site

“There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD” – Proverbs 21:30

I am a conservative evangelical Christian. This blog intends to speak up and out for all those, but especially Christians, who are being crushed under the jackboot of oppression.

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